


We Could Make This Place Beautiful

by Paint_Stained_Heart



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Brooklyn, First Meetings, M/M, Panama, Peace Corps, RPCV!Steve, SAM WILSON'S BROKEN PATRIOTISM HOUR, Sort of a Coffee Shop trope, Strong feelings about the United States of America, Veteran!Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 03:54:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20790191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paint_Stained_Heart/pseuds/Paint_Stained_Heart
Summary: No one knows what to do with these rising political tides, much less a testy one-armed veteran and a nervous returned Peace Corps Volunteer, lost in the thralls of Brooklyn, NY.Beta'd by RiverTam, who is the greatest human.





	We Could Make This Place Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact: Literati is a real coffee shop (in Ann Arbor, not Brooklyn) and if you ever want to support a genuinely good independent bookstore, you should check them out. Their instagram is adorable, too.

_Life is short, though I keep this from my children._  
_ Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine_  
_ in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,_  
_ a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways_  
_ I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least_  
_ fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative_  
_ estimate, though I keep this from my children._  
_ For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird._  
_ For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,_  
_ sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world_  
_ is at least half terrible, and for every kind_  
_ stranger, there is one who would break you,_  
_ though I keep this from my children. I am trying_  
_ to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,_  
_ walking you through a real shithole, chirps on_  
_ about good bones: This place could be beautiful,_  
_ right? You could make this place beautiful._

-Maggie Smith, “Good Bones”

It’s freezing outside. Not just cold -- _New-York-City-in-January_ cold. Steve’s been walking for blocks, with only his khaki pants and brown leather jacket to shield him from the icy wind chill - it’s quite literally snowing sideways today. He already knows his cheeks are pink, and he hates it.  
  
Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe he shouldn’t go.  
  
Sighing, he ducks off the sidewalk -- always dangerous in the city where foot traffic stops for no man -- and shuffles around in his pockets until his fingers find purchase on the crumpled flyer he’s looking for. He checks the pamphlet again, leaning against the rail of a stoop to make sure he’s got the address right before walking in and embarrassing himself.  
  
But of course he has the address right. It’s only the fortieth godforsaken time he’s pulled it out of his pocket.  
  
It could be worse, he has to admit. It could be a suburban soccer mom’s walking group. It could be a Christian singles mixer. It could be a petition-organizing meeting calling for the secession of Texas. It can’t be that bad.  
  
He looks down at the shoddy word-art emblazoned flyer, clearly made by someone drinking PBR past 2 am.

  
_**SAM WILSON’S BROKEN PATRIOTISM HOUR FOR ALL WHO MIGHT NOT YET HAVE LOST FAITH IN THIS DUMBASS COUNTRY OF OURS**_

  
_ ** VETERANS WELCOME** _

  
_ ** WEDNESDAYS 5 PM IN THE BASEMENT OF LITERATI** _

  
_ ** CHEERS AND GOD BLESS AMERICA (OR DON’T)** _

  
Underneath the text, there’s an image of an upside down American flag.  
  
Oh gosh. He’s not about to join an anarchy group, is he?

*

  
Steve stomps down a staircase down to the basement level, leaving behind a crunch of slushy snow on each step, and wipes his shoes on a welcome mat that says _Speak, Friend, and Enter.  
_  
He takes a huff of cold air that shocks his lungs back into working and lets himself in the door.  
  
It’s part coffee-shop, part library and local art vender. The lighting is dim and comes from neat old-fashioned light bulbs that hang at varying heights for aesthetic effect, and the counter behind the register reveals the very clever, Brooklyn habit of creating hip places that are coffee shops by day and exclusive underground speakeasies by night. It’s the kind of place that hosts feminist slam poetry nights. Where people actually remember to use they/them pronouns and slam specialty shots after defending their theses. The books are covered in hand-written recommendations by the staff, the environmentalist book club meets once a week on Saturday mornings according to a sign by the register, and Steve only sputters a little when he passes the LGBTQ/Activism book section. Also, dogs are welcome.  
  
The whole hipster movement is fine, Steve thinks, but people just don’t seem to get that they’re not superheroes for owning yoga mats and buying organic smoothies.  
  
He thinks quickly of Edilma, bashing her clothes against riverrock, literally beating the soap and muck out of them as she washes her children’s school uniforms in the river _Toabre_. How impeccably white each collared shirt needed to be. How she ironed the navy skirts smooth by heating the iron in her small kitchen fire, smoke swirling around her round face.  
  
He shakes the thought and tries not to imagine her balking at the price he pays now for a chai latte. (He can’t help calculating in his head though -- his singular beverage is worth ten pounds of rice, a week’s worth of food, back where Edilma is probably still beating those uniforms to passability in the river).

The lady at the register tells him the Wi-Fi password is on his receipt. Even after all this time, things like that still jar him. Things like internet access. Regularly.  
  
As he waits anxiously in the corner, tapping a pen that’d mercifully materialized in his pocket to distract him, he finally eyes what must be Sam Wilson’s coffee group. They’re taking up the largest table in the back, mostly men, but their biggest giveaway is that unlike everyone else in this coffee house, they’re not on computers or tablets or iWatches or whatever the hell else they invented while he was gone. No, they’re actually talking. It’s a small miracle, and Steve’ll take it.  
  
How there can be more people but less conversation in this city, Steve’ll never know, but he’s goddamn sure that he’s lonelier in New York than he ever was in Panama; paradoxically, there are more people now in his building than there were in his entire community put together, even in early November when all the city folk came into town from _afuera_ for the Independence Day celebrations. And yet he’d got from his apartment to this bookstore without breathing a single word to anybody.  
  
“Steve.”  
  
Steve almost jumps a foot-and-a-half in the air, feeling like someone’s recognized him. He’s not used to being recognized anymore. It’s not like it used to be. Of course, in a village of 150 residents where you’re the only _gringo_, you stand out. You’re used to being recognized. But here? In the swallowing anonymity of New York?  
  
If not careful, Steve’s convinced, a New Yorker can go weeks without really talking to anyone.  
  
For a half-second, he’s sure it’s this Sam Wilson guy who has somehow telepathically predicted that Steve’s come for his meeting, which frightens Steve because truthfully, he still has half a mind to leave this coffee shop with his chai in hand and forget about the whole thing.  
  
He looks to his left. The coffee lady with a double septum piercing is holding out his chai. On the side of the to-go cup, his name is scribbled. Well, _Steph.  
_  
Oh. Anonymous after all. It’s kind of pathetic that he was half-hopeful, that perhaps someone knew him like Pablo had known him. Like Alfonso had known him. Like Delia had _known_ him. But it’s Ms. Double-Septum, who couldn’t give a rat’s ass about what it’s like to beat rice out of its husk or churn fresh corn into _bollos_ or dance the _cumbia_ at two in the morning. She’s probably getting her film degree at NYU and getting laid by some guy she met on Tinder when her shift ends. And she’ll never ask him about what it’s like to be Steve. Or, well, _Steph._ And because it’s New York and not the rural parts of Cocle, Steve won’t ask her if his theories are correct, either. And so it goes.

  
With a preparatory deep breath and an intentional lowering of his shoulders from around his ears, which have been creeping upwards with tension and nerves, Steve resigns to actually go to the back table and try this thing out. It’s either this or therapy, or his roommate’s kicking him out for moping around and “killing his vibe.”  
  
Hipsters.  
  
“Uh, hey there,” Steve starts, clearing his throat as he approaches. He leads with his drink, as if it were a shield protecting him from the onslaught of awkwardness and introductions he’s surely walking into. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but is this--?”  
  
“--Sam Wilson’s Coffee Hour of Broken Patriotism? Yes, sir, it is.” It comes out in a rehearsed rush.  
  
Steve nods, looking at the man who finished his sentence. He’s black, fit, wearing a forest-green sweatshirt that says AIR FORCE across the chest (interesting) and when he smiles, Steve notices a charming gap between his front teeth.  
  
Mr. Air Force puts out his hand. Steve takes it. “Steve Rogers. Nice to meet you.”  
  
“The Sam Wilson,” the man says with a wink. Steve should’ve guessed. “The rest of ‘em are regulars, but I’ll let them introduce themselves.” Sam gestures generally to the rest of the table with a sweep of his arm.  
  
Steve looks around. There are other signs of ex-military paraphernalia. Dog tags. An ARMY hat. One guy’s missing an arm. Not necessarily ex-military, but. The odds aren’t in his favor.  
  
Oh god. Maybe this is some veterans-only PTSD recovery group. Maybe he shouldn’t be here at all.  
  
“I’ll go first,” says an older man in modern glasses with salt-and-pepper hair. “Tony Stark, the pleasure’s all yours. I did a lot of engineering projects for the government, mostly weapons design, you know, drones that kill people, missiles that kill people, but also the occasional Monsanto-style herbicide that’s decimating our environment. So that’s cheery.”  
  
“Natasha. They call me Nat. You call me Natasha. I worked in intelligence.” She sips her iced coffee, piercing eyes daring him to question her choice of an iced drink in January. Steve notices her nails are long and sharp, and that her jet of red hair is juxtaposed neatly against an all-black ensemble. At least they could be jacket buddies.  
  
“She’s not always this cold,” the next guy says, elbowing her playfully. But Natasha does not look like someone Steve would ever elbow playfully. She looks like someone who has seen far too much and built up a fortress of walls to dare anyone into asking her about it. Or like a cat on the receiving end of an ice bath. “I’m Dr. Banner, by the way.”  
  
Steve nods in acknowledgement, hoping they’ll all forgive him for forgetting their names immediately. There was Sam, and then Tony -- no, Tommy? -- and then the terrifying redhead, and now -- oh, what was his name again?  
  
“I am Thor. I’m from Norway. Haven’t got much to say on the theme of Broken Patriotism, since my country is the best and I would defend Her to the death, but I like the company.” Thor, whose hair is long but drawn back into a handsome, dirty-blonde bun, grins goofily.  
  
Alright, then.  
  
“James B. Barnes,” says the one-armed man. He looks to be about Steve’s age; mid-twenties, good looking - pale, with shoulder-length dark hair, broad shoulders, and storm-gray eyes.  
  
James B. Barnes doesn’t offer anything else, and no one elbows him playfully.  
  
They get around to the rest of them. Rhodes was Army. Lang, too. T’Challa’s the son of Wakandan immigrants, a Public Defender, and tired of being asked if he’s a taxi driver, or if he’s “even American.” Maria did two tours in Iraq, dealing with men who didn’t care for the fact that their CO was a woman.  
  
Then they all look expectantly at Steve, who’s just realized he’s still standing awkwardly over the table. He’s huge and suddenly self-conscious of the space he’s taking up. That’s a familiar feeling; he stood at least three heads over his host-mom. Actually, he stood about three heads over everyone, back then.  
  
“Yeah, yeah. I’m Steve. Born and raised right here in Brooklyn. I’m an RPCV.” His accent is thick.  
  
“A what?” says the Norwegian, thick eyebrows furrowed in confusion.  
  
“I thought it was ROTC,” says the doctor, pushing his glasses up his nose.  
  
“No, no, it’s -- damn all their acronyms. It’s, uh, Returned Peace Corps Volunteer.” Steve kicks the ground a little but can’t help but notice the furtive glances that get passed around the table. The redhead snickers. The one-armed fellow actually rolls his eyes. Steve’s cheeks warm for about the millionth time since entering Literati -- he knew this was a mistake. “Sorry, maybe this wasn’t really the right…”  
  
“Nonsense,” Wilson cuts him off for the second time, standing up now to pull up a chair from a neighboring table. The student studying there doesn’t so much as look up from her thick LSAT book. Sam pats the chair twice. “Please join us. All are welcome here. RPCVs and LGBTQs and PTSDs and ABCs and XOXO gossip girls and any other alphabet soup you care to dream up. We all have our own reasons for feeling our mixed feels for this broken-down fixer-upper country of ours.”  
  
The table seems to consider it. Steve swears the scowling one-armed guy whispers, “_L’Chaim._”  
  
With that little speech, Steve sits but tries to make himself small. It is no easy feat for all six-foot-two, two-hundred and change pounds of him. He tucks his hands between his legs, hopefully not looking like a perv, and leaves his chai untouched, shoulders hunched and back curled like a harp.  
  
Sam leads the discussion. It’s casual, like a middle-aged women’s book club in Dallas where the wine and suburban gossip take center stage over the book they bought at Target that Oprah probably recommended and only half of them actually read.  
  
There were two readings today: a poem called “Good Bones,” and a _New York Times_ article about gun laws.  
  
“We try to keep the reading light,” explains Sam, “‘cause most of us be workin’ at least two jobs to get by.”  
  
Steve hasn’t read the poem, but the table realizes this quickly. The redhead, Natasha-not-Nat, reads it out loud for his sake. From what he gathers, it’s about a mom who doesn’t want her kids to know how fucked up the world is. She feels like she has to sell them on it, like a real estate agent.  
  
_Because the only metaphors we know how to draw anymore are about capitalism_, he thinks privately to himself. He imagines any of his community members encountering a real estate agent and almost laughs out loud. He remembers helping them float wood down the river on bamboo and then hauling it up the bank so they could build their houses. The way they tore down walls that didn’t suit them and built them back up just as quickly. The zinc, or more often, _penca_ roofs made of doubled-over palm leaves. The way the hills were quiet enough to hear someone hammering a mile away. The image of Jorge putting up his house, all with his own two hands and his son, Jorge Luis, makes the poem feel empty somehow. Unrelatable, like everything stateside has been so far.  
  
_“This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful_,” Natasha concludes. Her voice is the sharpened edge of a machete -- it could slice him open any second.  
  
They leap into a surprisingly lively discussion about the last line. Steve hasn’t seen people this alive in a long time -- he’s come from cell-signal-less hills to a world of screen-watching, dead-eyed zombies. But these folk are alive. They focus on two words: You could. They debate whether it’s a call to action, if you is the reader, or the author, or the next generation. Whether any one individual can do it alone. What’s the definition of beautiful? What repairs might that require? And how can we agree on them?  
  
They discuss it all, but they also talk about gun laws after the two mass shootings last weekend. They veer off course, too, talk about how Tony’s partner is expecting, and Steve tries to figure out if they’re using partner because Tony is gay, or because now _partner_ is gender-neutral and politically correct and chic, or if maybe he’s married to a cowboy. Regardless, they talk about what it means to bring a child into twenty-first century America. They talk about how cold this January’s been. And then about climate change.  
  
Steve likes it, in part, though he contributes little as he nurses his chai after finally liberating one of his hands from where it’s glued to his thigh, and little by little straightens his back. They’re very intelligent people. But he’s only been home for two months now, and he can’t help but also feel revolted. These people, who have seen so much suffering on a global scale -- God, the sum of the horrors this handful of people have seen could surely fill Dante’s inferno three times over -- sitting around, drinking pricey, foam-heart-style lattes in a liberal underground coffee house, complaining to people who already agree with them…  
  
He sips the coffee. He immediately thinks of all the work that goes into making a simple cup of coffee. The children harvesting as soon as they can tell apart the red from the green, as young as three years old. The women laying the fresh cherries out on frayed plastic tarps to dry in the baking sun, only to come out running to haul them inside at the first sign of rain. The pulsing heartbeat of his tiny Panamanian community, the women beating the coffee out of their beans on a _pilon_. His host mom, Yolanda, toasting the beans by night over an open fire. All her seemingly frantic need to not get wet while toasting. _No puedo mojarme, no puedo mojarme_. Her feeding the toasted beans -- not really beans, a misnomer, but seeds - handful by charcoal handful, into the hand-crank grinder; him grinding the coffee manually, trying to ease what he could of her burden, early in the morning, sweating like a pig under the blanket of humidity that hugs Panama like an old friend. They’d store it all in an old mayonnaise jar Yola had saved. And he’d always walk home with a Tupperware of coffee grounds for himself, no charge. That’s just how they were.  
  
Now it’s such immediate gratification. No one here has the patience, let alone the time, for something that elaborate. He bets no one in this coffee shop even knows what a coffee tree looks like. Not even the baristas. _How disconnected we've become from our own world_, he thinks.  
  
He sighs, missing the two years where a coffee tree in his backyard provided just about the only cover for his low-walled tarp-and-wood shower monstrosity.  
  
“You’re awfully quiet, new guy,” breaks in James B. Barnes, the equally quiet (_thank you very much_) one-armed brooder. Steve blinks. James has his coat on.  
  
They all have their coats on.  
Fuck.  
  
Steve scrambles from his reverie, blinking down to the chai he’s hardly touched and feeling the soreness of muscles he’s been unknowingly tensing for the better part of the hour. Barnes is above him, a sort of grim but knowing smile pulling up only one corner of his mouth. He’s also in a leather jacket, though his is jet black and more in the biking family than Steve’s brown 1950s-dad getup, and the left arm sleeve is pinned neatly in half. Steve wonders briefly about the decision to not stuff it full of some kind of prosthetic. Maybe if they were friends, he’d ask about it. But they’re not. Barnes is just some guy who rolled his eyes about Steve’s decision to dedicate two years of his life to service in Central America. Who rolled his eyes at the poverty of Yolanda, and Edilma, and Pablo, and Delia, and Alej’o…  
  
“You didn’t say much yourself,” Steve says quietly, grabbing his coat. Steve feels sick, but can’t bear to throw away the chai. He’s hated waste ever since he got back; and this is a country full of waste.  
  
“I’m not a talker,” Barnes says. Steve raises both eyebrows in acknowledgement, not sure what to say next.  
  
“Okay, everyone got next week’s reading written down? Great. Next week, same time, same place. Do something to make the world a better place today, y’all. Have a good one.” Sam Wilson leaves with a friendly wave, and the table scatters as only a few stragglers stay behind. The stoic brunette, Maria, talks about the service dog she’s taking to the VA next week with Dr. Banner, and Rhodes and T’Challa are discussing a Black Lives Matter sit-in that some activists are organizing at a high school in Queens, and Lang is pulling out his Alcoholics Anonymous tokens -- it appears he’s got another very important meeting after this one. Feeling perhaps a little quick to judge, Steve lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding, and turns back to James with a little more patience.  
  
“So… what? You join up with the Peace Corps to atone for my sins in the Middle East? Or maybe to assuage your guilt of being born a straight white male?” James says without missing a beat. His words strike Steve like a lash. “Let me guess, you took a bunch of pictures with African kids that you half-assedly taught English? And you probably don’t have a teaching license, either.”  
  
“What the hell?” Steve says uncleverly. He’s always hated getting attention for doing Peace Corps. The old women from his old crummy apartment building -- friends of his mom’s -- saying things like thank you for your service and look at our Stevie, out saving the world! But this, this outright antagonizing? It’s uncalled for. He didn’t save the world, or even come close. But he did make something beautiful there, dammit.  
  
Barnes just shrugs.  
  
Steve tries again. “I joined after my ma died of cancer, and I didn't have to financially support her medical bills. And I didn’t teach English, or serve on the African continent. We built an aqueduct together. In Panama.” Ready to be back in his bed in his very dark apartment, Steve slips his hands into the pockets of his jacket and makes for the door.  
  
“Wait, fuck,” says Barnes.  
  
“No, fuck you, James B. Barnes.” That’ll be the last of SAM WILSON’S BROKEN PATRIOTISM HOUR Steve’ll participate in for a long while. He tips his baseball cap to the lady at the register with a final have a good day ma’am he can’t believe he manages, because actual rage is burning hot and heavy in his veins. How dare he…  
  
Steve stomps his way up from the basement to the street, even the tinkling of the door’s bell irritating him as he glares his way down the sidewalk. What a fucking waste of time…  
  
“Wait!” Barnes is actually running -- shameless as the left jacket-wing flaps against his chest -- and stops in front of Steve, who curtly shoves himself into his shoulder and keeps walking. “No, please, wait-”  
  
“What do you want?” Steve spits, looking up. He can see his breath. They’re face to face in the foot traffic of Brooklyn at six. The passersby give them nasty looks for taking up too much sidewalk and breaking the unspoken rules of the City That Never Sleeps. But Barnes looks something intense.  
  
“I’m sorry about being a dick. My therapist says I need to work on that.”  
  
“Ya think?”  
  
“Let me buy you a drink.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Come on, you can tell me what Peace Corps is really like.”  
  
“They have a website. I’m sure you can find everything you need on there,” Steve says briskly, internally pleased with his comeback.  
  
“Bucky,” James says. “Everyone calls me Bucky.” He sticks out his right hand. Steve eyes it and curses Sarah for raising him to be a gentleman as he shakes Bucky’s only hand with only the slightest show of annoyance. “I’d like a redo. Please. I’ve been a real asshole ever since I got back. Everything hurts like a bitch and the country is ungrateful and no one knows what it’s like and people keep staring at the arm and--”  
  
Steve raises an eyebrow. Bucky lets out a big, surrenderous breath.  
  
“--and I was quick to judge. You seem like an alright guy.”  
  
“Not a guilty straight white male atoning for your sins?”  
  
Bucky makes a face. “Should I say sorry again?”  
  
“No. But you_ are_ paying for my drink.”

  
*

  
Steve’s not sure exactly how he’s finishing not his first, nor second, but _third_ drink with this Bucky Barnes. It surely wasn’t his lifeless, less-than-inviting introduction at Sam’s meeting, nor the all-too-personal, crassly assumptive insults he’d hurled at him afterwards.  
  
In the streets of New York, it ain’t out of the ordinary to get a good yelling at or shaken fist every once in a while. But it’s not too common for the same asshole to chase you down two blocks and apologize, either. His eyes had been hurricanes; eyes that meant what they said, Steve was sure of it. Or, as sure as he could be, reading the face of a guy he’s known for a little over an hour. But he got real good at reading faces, once. You have to, when your counterparts are spitting _campesino_ Spanish at you with all four of their teeth.  
  
Bucky, clearly relieved to see Steve had caved to his pleading, brunted the windchill and led them to a seedy dive bar. And not an ironically seedy dive bar full of millennials still carrying Daddy’s credit card and getting overpriced art degrees. An actual dive bar, with a rowdy group of Indian boys in the back, a broken Pacman game, a single out-of-order restroom with a mystery fluid seeping out from under the door, and a fellow very most certainly snoring in his bar stool.  
  
Steve was grateful. He’d seen enough thoughtless spending for a lifetime. Frugal booze was a cause he could get behind. He didn’t actually let Bucky pay for his drink, though. For one, he wasn’t sure if this was a date or just a quick cover for the man’s bad behavior earlier, and he wasn’t sure which he wanted it to be, either. Hence, covering his own tab. The bartender, an inked, plump woman in her forties with a Marlboro Red tucked behind her ear and tangled in her unmanageable red hair, brought him his drink. It was certainly better than throwing back shots of Seco, fermented sugar cane juice that was cheaper than water just about everywhere in Panama, which the _gente_ shoved in his face without taking no for an answer. Or worse, the _chicha fuerte_, fermented corn juice they brewed in old five-gallon paint buckets. The way men howled through the _cumbias_ and crawled home, shamelessly shitfaced, their _cutarras_ muddy and destroyed, at the wee hours of dawn, it all swallowed him whole for a second.  
  
But Steve was not in Panama. And his_ gente_ aren’t his _gente_. They’re there with Brad now, his follow up from Washington. And that’s fine.  
  
It has to be fine.  
  
So, he ordered a rum and coke because the Mexicans knew something the Panamanians didn’t, and he gets on with it.  
  
It’d been as if Bucky’s jaw had come unstuck. For all his stoic silence in the coffee house, the one-armed enigma had come to life. He doesn’t drink -- “messes with my psych meds,” he left hanging by way of explanation -- but he does weave stories with the energy only a true blue Brooklynite can muster. He didn’t shy from talk of war -- not the IED that robbed him of ambidexterity, not the rocky relationship he had with his Pop or God, not about his guilt about not participating in Pride this year, nor his guilt about rooting for the Yankees this past World Series. Steve was in awe. He hadn’t talked to someone for this long since… since…  
  
What was more, Steve hadn’t realized how starkly starved for undivided attention he was. Not once did Bucky pull out a cell phone, tap an Apple Watch, or grumble something about pay cuts or dog sitting into a bluetooth device. They just… were. Present. Physically there on the sticky vinyl seats, drenched in bad 80s rock and cigarette smoke, aware of the chill of the rims of their glasses and the drumming of the bartender's electric blue nails against the also-sticky countertops. It was really impressive that it was still sticky, too, because he and Barnes were just about the only patrons still awake and ordering. Snores McSleepy certainly hadn’t needed anything since at least Happy Hour.  
  
Steve was also very, very aware of how Bucky’s foot had come to press up against his own.  
  
They reveled in some of the same things. A deep appreciation for ice cubes, for example, as both of them had gone without the seemingly simple luxury for Lord knows how long. And peanut butter. Steve was, perhaps against his better judgement, impressed. Bucky knew the difference between a good latrine and a bad one. He was comfortable with long stretches of silence, like Steve. He knew what it was like to be the only white person in a room, as so few white Americans do. He, too, had seen roofs collapse and held crying children. Bucky was up front about the flesh-eating guilt and screams that rock him through the night, because unlike Steve, sometimes Bucky broke down those roofs. Sometimes he’d made those children cry.  
  
Steve dreamed a world of jungle green. Bucky nightmared of choking on sand. Neither had truly returned to the U.S., if they were being truthful, and by the looks of it, they were.  
  
Perhaps it was through that brutal, frankly unearned honesty that Steve arrived at drink number two.  
  
“You been watching this carnival of an election cycle?” Bucky’d even ventured at one point, a pretty typical first-date question in this political climate. Gotta ask before you start sleeping with the enemy, Steve’d supposed, though he wasn’t entirely on board with this close-minded mentality.  
  
He should’ve seen the question coming. It seemed like all U.S. Americans were doing these days was talking about Trump over time-of-day-appropriate beverages. The Wall over brunch mimosas. Pussy-grabbing over Central Park coffee. The pending impeachment at Happy Hour and Russia over dessert wine. Really, Steve couldn’t believe how central drink-sharing was in 21st century social culture. He’d had his fair share of grossly saccharine cups of coffee en _paseo_ in the mountains of Cocle, but NYC took it to a new level.  
  
Well, might as well put his cards on the table if he wanted anything remotely real out of this. “You mean the Hunger Games parading around as democracy? No,” he said honestly. He’d gotten used to living off the grid -- and he hadn’t quite managed to get back on it. He’d liked his $20 SONY radio for baseball and _tipico_ and not much else.  
Bucky raised an eyebrow. Admittedly, it was a pretty daring answer in the age of being over-informed and constantly having to prove your wokeness. Not to mention the Oppression Olympics and all that. For that very reason, Steve’d given up on the gay night life thing a while ago, tired of the wealthy cis white gay male community lamenting their first world plights while the city dressed itself in rainbows and soaked itself in booze every June in their honor. Tell that to Carlos, an almost definitely gay tween in Steve’s site, subjected and exposed only to Catholic rhetoric in a country that doesn’t grant same-sex marriage still.  
  
Steve’d never come out to anyone in his community. It was his deepest regret from the two years of his life he dedicated to that tiny isthmus. But Esteban, Steve’s easier _sobrenombre_ in the community, had been so masculine - hauling bags of sand from the river for the concrete of their water tank, plowing through dense _monte_ with his machete, that it seemed unnatural to bring up that he also kissed men on the side. The people were so painfully unsuspecting, it seemed, though they usually caught on more than they let on. It was only, unfortunately, toward the very end of his service that he’d started cooking with his host mom, introducing her to things like eggplant as she taught him how to prep freshly killed _gallina de patio_, literally backyard chicken. He’d even started a women’s _artesania_ group, weaving fine, intricate sombreros with natural fibers dyed with leaves and left in mud for days to bring out that shiny black that only the women’s waist-length hair rivaled. Of course, the women’d done all the work and brought all the knowledge. All he did was set the time and date of the meeting; they took care of the rest.  
  
So he got close, sitting there amongst weaving women half his size, laughing through their filthy jokes and feeling those coming-out words pressed against the back of his teeth.  
  
But he didn’t come out. And he doesn’t watch the news. And he should care about the election, but the truth is that he’s so disillusioned that he couldn’t give a damn.  
  
And he’d had the chance to follow that whole train of thought, because Bucky Barnes still hadn’t said anything.  
  
“What?” Steve’d asked, feeling his liquor a little. “No lecture on how it’s my civic duty to stay informed?”  
  
“Civic duty? Watch yourself.” Bucky meant it.  
  
“I just think the news does more harm than good.”  
  
Bucky’d looked curious. “Explain so I don’t keep wanting to sock you in the mouth,” he said. “Please.”  
  
Steve could hear what Bucky wasn’t saying._ Because I gave this fuckin’ arm for your free speech and right to vote, pal._ He had a point.  
  
Steve held up a hand -- half surrender, half let-me-explain. And he did, elaborating on his new stance on prioritizing localized, if not local, politics and activism only. How national politics serve only to distract the working class…  
  
“You an anarchist?” Bucky cut in, eyes testing him.  
  
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”  
  
“That’s not an answer,” Bucky said wisely.  
  
“No,” Steve sighed, setting down his drink and turning to face Bucky straight on, swiveling the bar stool and everything. “No. I believe in our Constitution. I believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, through laws and government regulation. I believe in religious freedom and public education and all the great stuff we said at the beginning. I’m not anti-government. Hell, I worked for the government and represented the States well. But you can’t give a fair trial to a dead black teenager and you can’t grant same-sex marriage licenses to anyone who was unlucky enough to be in Orlando, or die of AIDS before straight people started getting it, so…”  
  
“Can you just… pause?” Bucky’d pressed, closing his eyes. “‘M sorry. You’re just making it all hurt. This is why I don’t talk at Sam’s stupid meetings. I got buddies who ain’t neva gonna see the light o’ day again, and they did it in the name of this country. And they did it so people like you could go save the world on the government’s dime and still have the right to voice ya two cents in a crummy bar in Queens when ya got back.”  
  
Steve rubbed his temples. It was about then that he’d ordered drink number three, just as his brain was finally catching up with his tongue.  
  
“I - I’m sorry, James.”  
  
“Bucky.”  
  
“Bucky,” Steve corrected without venom. “I - maybe it’s too soon for me to be out, drinking, dating. I’m not adjusting all that well to being back. I ain’t myself. I’m… angry.”  
  
“I get that,” Bucky said. “Just gotta remember who you’re angry at, pal. Can I tell you something?” Bucky said, searching Steve’s eyes for what, Steve couldn’t say.  
  
“I slept under my bed. That’s what I did. I mothafuckin’ slept under my mothafuckin’ bed. I’m twenty-seven goddamn years old. And I couldn’t bear how soft my mattress was, how crisp the sheets are after ya machine-dry them, and I felt so exposed that I just slept under my bed. And I knew it was batshit, at least a part of me knew how fucked it was, but mostly I just gave into it, didn’t even give it a second thought. But finally, Nat, the-”  
  
“-redhead, I remember.”  
  
“Well, she saw my pillow down there. And she asked when the last time I’d gotten laid was, and well, I guess I realized things were bad. I mean, they still kinda suck. At least people probably tell you, ‘thank you for your service,’ instead of, I dunno, ‘baby killer’ or ‘_you’re_ the terrorist!’ I guess the point is, Steve, we’re both fucked up. I’m okay with you being fucked up. Living overseas and coming back, it’s like the world is a pop-up book. You’ve seen it all, all the bells and whistles, and then they’re closed up and the world just becomes a regular book. Stupid metaphor. Hopefully you get what I’m trying to say. Like we're seeing a dull, grayed-over, surreal version of life how it ain't.”  
  
Steve nodded. “I hear you,” he treaded carefully. “But ya know, I actually really hate that. The praise. It’s so empty and wrong. I didn’t do anything but try to be a half-decent human being.” They should be thanking you, not me, Steve’d thought.  
  
“What was that about you being half-decent?” Bucky winked, and like that, the mood lightened and Steve uncrossed his legs and shifted in his seat and breathed again.  
Going on a date with James Barnes was a helluva ride.  
  
So Steve can’t honestly tell if they’re arguing or jiving and he’s already almost looking into the bottom of his glass again, but one thing is for certain: in Bucky, he has met his match.  
  
“For all your broken patriotism, you’ve got a very all-American vibe, you know that?” Bucky finally says, looking him over as if they haven’t been swapping stories all evening.  
  
“Is it the Aryan race thing?” Steve half-jokes.  
  
“Shut up, you’re talking to an immigrant Jew. Nah,” Bucky shakes his head, bringing his club soda to his lips. “It’s your integrity. That star-spangled conviction to do what’s right. Defend the defenseless, etc. etc.”  
  
Steve honestly laughs. “Just call me Captain America.”  
  
“Careful,” Bucky grins mischievously, “I just might use that later.” He clears his throat. “Three cheers for Captain America,” Bucky toasts, lifting his half-empty glass to meet Steve’s definitely-empty one. Amused, Steve brought his glass to clink Bucky’s.  
  
“Sure thing, pal.” He laughs for the first time in a long while.  
  
They drink.

  
*

  
With his right and only arm, Bucky holds the door open for Steve.  
  
“I’m sorry that got weird,” he sighs. They leave the bar, hands stuffed in pockets in a futile effort to soften the icy blow waiting for them on the other side of the steamed-up door.  
  
“I’m not good at dates,” Steve admits. “I don’t have my footing yet, you know?” He thinks about it, blushes and hopes it passes off as a reaction to the wind chill. But really. Peggy, the high school sweetheart he was too embarrassed to dance with at prom. Sharon, his closest site neighbor in Panama who used to hike three hours for a good fuck but could never talk about feelings. When, exactly, _has_ he had his footing when it came to romance?  
  
“I do know.” Steve knows he can’t relate to Bucky just because he’s seen all the episodes of _Band of Brothers_, but he knows they’ve both been through something genuinely life-alternating, been a part of something no one understands but everyone has an opinion on (Steve cringes to remember the No White Saviors and @jadedcorps episode that transpired during his time in Panama). Seen unseeable things. Learned new words. Bonded bone-deep with people so different from themselves. Been immersed in cultures as far from Kansas as they come. Earned callouses. Worked muscles. “Um,” Bucky bites his lip. That’s new. “I don’t sleep on the floor anymore, if that turns you on. Wanna keep me company tonight?”  
  
“Yeah, okay,” Steve agrees.  
  
What would Yolanda say?

_Alla la vida._

  
*

  
Bucky’s the little spoon. Steve wouldn’t have guessed.

  
*

  
“The world wants to believe we’re superheroes, huh?” Bucky drawls, staring at the ceiling, his head perched on Steve’s bare chest. It’s early in the morning, because of course Steve had sex on his very first date in the US with none other than the one-armed asshole who summarized his two years in the Peace Corps as atoning for militant sins and his straight white guilt. Bucky’s hair is sweaty and in a mostly-undone bun. Bucky’s room was blue and casually messy but not gross - a strewn T-shirt or sock, but no pile of nuclear dishes and not a cockroach to be seen.  
  
Steve’s time in Panama had left him with a deep appreciation of cockroach-less spaces.  
  
“I guess,” Steve replies, waiting for Bucky to say more. He does.  
  
“They make movies about us. Soldiers, I mean. Action, adventure. Hugging foreign kids, giving them Christmas presents, wiping their bodies off the floor. What, they never wanted a picture of you in front of that aqueduct you built, a little Panamanian kid on your back? For their pamphlets and recruiting websites? I’m tellin’ ya, they put us up there with Superman. A pedestal, like we went out and saved the whole goddamn world when all you did was buy some PVC pipes and all I did was shoot where my CO told me to shoot.”  
  
“And you don’t like that?” Steve asks, lifting the hand that isn’t pillowing his head to card through Bucky’s hair. “Most people love that shit, you know. Being thought of as a hero. It’s supposed to make you feel good. Like when movie stars visit kids in hospitals.”  
  
“It feels so empty. They see my dog tags - or worse, start asking about my arm - and they think I’m this great, self-sacrificing, larger-than-life GI Joe. I didn’t lose the arm in battle, none of that Game of Thrones bull about honor. It’s honor-less. It’s drones. Half the time we don’t see the enemy’s faces. The whites of their eyes, as they say.”  
  
“How’d ya lose the arm, then? If you don’t mind my asking.” Sarah Rogers’ politeness snuck in at the last minute.  
  
“I was in my truck with my men. I was eating a fucking sandwich. I threw my body in front of exactly zero people - it all happened too fast to even blink.”  
  
A shiver runs through Bucky, and he flinches, and Steve decides not to press any further. “Damn,” he says instead. A noncommittal agreement.  
  
“Well, it’s 7:00 am on a Thursday. This ex Peace Corps volunteer got somewhere to be?” Bucky presses, eyes rolling up to look at Steve’s chin. James really is rather handsome from this angle. Steve’d enjoyed him from several angles _anoche_...  
  
“Actually, yeah,” Steve says, pressing his lips together. He’s only feigning disappointment; he’s pretty ready to get a shower and get his head on straight again.  
  
“What do you do?”  
  
“Right now I’m just volunteering at the library,” Steve replies. He hopes it doesn’t sound lame. There’s lots of work - especially in government - for returned volunteers like him, but he’s waiting to see if he can use his new bilingual skills to help immigrant families in the city. He just hasn’t found the right nonprofit.  
  
“Jesus Christ,” Bucky groans, flipping over onto his stomach and letting Steve out of the bed. He starts pulling on his pants, looking for his belt. Oh, Gloria will get a right kick out of seeing him in yesterday’s clothes, that’s for sure. Just to give Bucky shit, Steve makes the sign of the cross.  
  
“And yourself?” Steve asks halfway into his gray sweater.  
  
“I’m actually with the fire department now.” Well, it explains the abs.  
  
“Good for you,” Steve says lamely, nearly dressed now. Wallet, phone, keys… the crumpled pamphlet from Sam’s meeting still in the right front pocket of his khakis...  
  
“‘M I gonna see you again?” Bucky asks. He licks his lips nervously. Steve’s surprised. He really thought it’d been a one-time thing, especially with Bucky’s confusing hot-and-cold act.  
  
“Uh..."  
  
“Come to the next meeting. Wednesday. We can figure out how to be Americans, together. I’ll send you the readings. Here - give me your number.”  
  
Steve works at a _library_. And he remembers the readings - Sam told them all at the end of the meeting last night.  
  
Oh. He’s slow on the uptake and has to hide the smile and the warm feeling that’s starting to make him feel light all over. He punches in his number, remembering that his area code is no longer 507, and maybe starting to feel almost okay with it. He puts his contact as Captain America with a little bald eagle emoji.  
  
Bucky texts him ten minutes out the door.

*


End file.
